by Matt Clarke

On November 20, 2025, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit held that an Alabama law making sheriffs responsible for jail prisoners’ health care did not excuse a county from liability for having a policy resulting in inadequate prisoner health care. The summary dismissal of a claim against the county in a lawsuit over the death of a jail prisoner was reversed and the case was remanded.

Mitchell Wayne Smothers, Jr. was convicted of fourth-degree possession of a forged instrument. He was booked into Alabama’s Walker County Jail in February 2019. At that time, he had several serious health issues, including liver cirrhosis secondary to hepatitis C, alcoholism, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, recurrent cellulitis, and nonhealing pressure wounds. Just one month earlier, he was discharged from a hospital after being treated for antibiotic-resistant infections in large, open, nonhealing wounds on his leg.

The County contracted for prisoner health care with Preemptive Forensic Health Solutions (“Preemptive”) which is owned and operated by Roger Childers, a registered nurse with a Ph.D. in Business Administration. He referred to himself and signed communications as “Dr. Childers.” Court documents show the healthcare company was aware …

by Chuck Sharman

On January 16, 2025, a grand jury in Georgia’s Richmond County reported that its inspection of the County jail revealed serious overcrowding, with mattresses on the floor pressing many cells into double-occupancy. As if to underscore the problem’s seriousness, a detainee was violently assaulted and stabbed on January 23, sending him to the hospital with nine stab wounds. Five fellow detainees have been charged in that attack.

GA Code § 15-12-71 (2024) requires grand juries in each of the state’s 159 counties to physically inspect its jail every year. The grand jury seated in state Superior Court for Richmond County for its November 2025 term conducted the inspection on January 6, 2026, presenting its report to Judge R. Ashley Wright on the term’s last day. Though jailers quibbled about the exact number, the Grand Jury reported that the Charles B. Webster Detention Center in Augusta was operating at more than 126% of its designed capacity.

That “inadequate ability to house its jail population,” the report noted, was reflected in the fact that the jail was “set up to house 1,065” detainees and prisoners, but there were 1,346 confined there on the date of …

On December 30, 2025, Pennsylvania’s Centre County renewed its contract with PrimeCare Medical—a prison and jail healthcare profiteer—despite the dozens of lawsuits over substandard care that have been filed against it. The five-year contract will cost the County $8 million in total, or about $1.6 million per year, amounting to a 27% increase from the previous year. PrimeCare has been the contractor for the Centre County Correctional Facility since 2005.

Just in 2023, PrimeCare paid out at least $1.2 million to settle lawsuits from prisoners and detainees in Pennsylvania over the company’s failure to provide adequate healthcare. And that’s just what PLN has reported on from the handful of settlements that were unsealed; the actual figure is likely much higher, as the company has managed to keep their litigation payments confidential in many cases. [See: PLN, Mar. 2025, p. 51]. In one of the unsealed settlements, PrimeCare paid $1 million to the estate of Brittany Ann Harbaugh, 26, a detainee who died from an opiate withdrawal after being booked at the Bucks County Jail in 2018. Harbaugh did not see a doctor and did not receive detox medications, despite telling a PrimeCare nurse she was experience withdrawal …

by Chuck Sharman

On June 5, 2025, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit vacated a $24 million punitive damages award against NaphCare for a Washington jail death, remanding the case to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Washington to make a new punitive damages award that was not more than four times the $2.75 million in compensatory damages awarded to the Estate of Cindy Lou Hill. But the firm was not off the hook entirely; only weeks earlier, another massive jury verdict was returned against NaphCare for costing another Washington jail prisoner his leg, as reported elsewhere in this issue. [See: PLN, Jan. 2026, p.25.]

In Hill’s case, the firm was hit with a July 2022 verdict awarding $26.75 million to the surviving daughter of Cindy Lou Hill, 55, for NaphCare’s denial of medical care to her for a ruptured intestine. As PLN also reported, that led to her death in 2018 at the Spokane County Jail. [See: PLN, Oct. 2023, p.27.]

NaphCare appealed that verdict, and the Ninth Circuit provided considerable relief. However, the Court found sufficient evidence to uphold the jury’s finding that NaphCare was liable for maintaining …

by Chuck Sharman

For letting a detainee’s infected leg go untreated so long that it had to be amputated, a federal jury assigned liability to NaphCare, Inc., the contracted healthcare provider at Washington’s Pierce County Jail in Tacoma, returning a massive $25 million verdict on Javier Tapia’s civil rights claim on April 4, 2025. That was on top of a $1 million settlement reached with the County the prior month, as PLN reported. [See: PLN, Apr. 2025, p.20.] The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington then awarded $2,271,906.70 in costs and attorney’s fees on November 26, 2025, pushing the total recovery for Tapia, 43, to $28,271,906.70.

Tapia said that he was struggling with opioid addiction in June 2018 when he was arrested for driving a stolen vehicle and booked into the jail. Three months later, when guards noticed his disordered thinking, he submitted a sick call for insomnia. But he wasn’t seen by a doctor for another month, and only after a guard noticed his toes were turning black. By then, his foot and leg had developed bleeding sores and blisters, and his weight was rapidly plummeting. Taken to a hospital, he was diagnosed …

by Chuck Sharman

A $2.75 million settlement will help the surviving children of a detainee left to decompensate from her mental illness for seven and a half months before she died in Washington’s Clark County Jail in Vancouver. That was the result of an agreement reached in July 2025 between the Estate of Shelly Ann Monahan and officials with the County and its contracted jail healthcare provider, NaphCare, Inc.

Monahan was days away from her 28th birthday when she was booked into the lockup on felony charges on December 3, 2020. She had a history of drug use and repeatedly spent time in the jail after related arrests. During those incarcerations, jailers also became aware of her mental health struggles, placing Monahan on suicide watch the first time in 2014 and again the following year.

So it should have come as no surprise when she arrived at the jail the last time and was found to be under the influence of drugs. However, she was placed in the general population after a medical evaluation by NaphCare staff—without undergoing a mental health screening. Three weeks later, a nurse noted that Monahan “appeared disheveled, her room was a …

by Chuck Sharman

Meeting at the courthouse in Wilkes-­Barre, Pennsylvania, the Luzerne County Council approved three settlements in November 2024, totaling $645,330 in payouts on behalf of three former detainees at the Luzerne County Prison—two of whom committed suicides that jailers allegedly failed to prevent. That was on top of a $780,000 settlement approved the year before for another detainee’a unprevented suicide, pushing total payouts to $1,425,330.

Under terms of the first agreement, approved on November 12, 2025, the County paid $45,330 to Joshua S. Miller, whose federal civil rights suit claimed that he was subjected to a highly invasive strip search in April 2016, when tipped-­off guards found him and five other detainees with suspected contraband drugs after seeing visitors.

Miller, then 28, admitted that guards found and confiscated contraband from his pants. But they then took him to a conference room and strip-­searched him to look for more, leaving him naked and shackled while the door repeatedly opened and closed, exposing him to male and female workers in the office. Finding no more contraband at that point, he said that they ordered him on all fours atop a table and forced him to place …

by Michael Thompson

James Clubb was incarcerated in the Marinette County Jail on September 13, 2018, when he bit down on something hard and broke a tooth. At the time, for-­profit provisions company Aramark held “the exclusive right to provide food service” to “the County’s inmates, staff and visitors at the Marinette County Jail.” Clubb believed that the object that broke his tooth was a piece of plastic, like “the corner of a cutting board or something.”

At the time of the injury, he reported it to one of the guards but was told to submit a medical request. He submitted four or five requests but received no response until September 24, when he saw the nurse. Three days later, he submitted another request. Subsequently, the physician approved Tylenol and antibiotics for Clubb. The doctor also submitted a dentistry order which would be filled by “the first willing and available provider.” It was only after another visit to the nurse on October 11 that an appointment was set for October 19, more than a month after he broke his tooth.

Clubb filed a lawsuit for state claims on September 19, 2022, four years after the event. …

by Michael Thompson

Jails within Washington state are finding it increasingly difficult to arrange medical providers. In one example, when Kitsap County recently put out a request for a medical provider, only their current provider responded, Everhealth LLC, a subsidiary of Alabama-­based NaphCare. As a result, Kitsap County was forced to accept their $6.8 million bid for 2026 services. That was over $1 million beyond the previous year’s cost to the county and more than double the cost from just five years ago. In 2029, the price will spike again to $8.6 million.

Everhealth had apparently considered pulling out of Washington completely. They have said that of the six jails with which they currently work, only two will continue to provide services after the end of 2026.

Medical care is a fundamental right for incarcerated persons, so failing to provide it is not an option. And yet, jails in Washington struggle to get bids due to the high cost of medical services in jails and in Washington in particular. Devon Schrum of the South Correctional Entity (SCORE) described it as a crisis. After SCORE’s then current provider went into bankruptcy, they sought a new contract. SCORE …

The Tennessee Department of Correction (DOC) is asking Gov. Bill Lee (R) to increase the state’s contract with private prison profiteer CoreCivic, Inc. by $13 million.

On November 4, 2025, DOC head Frank Strada presented an annual budget request for the agency that nearly doubled the amount of money Tennessee paid to CoreCivic in 2024. [See: PLN, Aug. 2024, p. 17.] The Nashville-­based company operates four prisons in Tennessee: the South Central Correctional Facility, Hardeman County Correctional Facility, Whiteville Correctional Facility, and the Trousdale Turner Correctional Center (TTCC), the largest prison in the state.

CoreCivic’s potential pay bump comes despite the fact the company has been fined more than $44 million over the last three years for a litany of contract violations, such as longstanding staff vacancies, prisoners being improperly placed in solitary, and skipped medical care visits. TTCC, in particular, has come under fire for a long record of assaults, murders, and understaffing in the decade since it first opened in 2016. Last year, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that it was launching a civil rights investigation into the troubled TTCC as a result of the rampant abuses. [See: PLN, March …